I was just listening to a sermon from last December by Rob Bell entitled "Calling All Peacemakers." I think I've probably blogged about this already, but I'm going to do it again.
First something unrelated, but this stuck out when I saw the scripture that he was using. He read Luke 19:41-42, I read on a little further and something stuck out to me that I don't think I've ever noticed. Here's the passage:
As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

Does anything stand out there? Because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.
It sounds to me like Jesus is saying "Hey! I'm here! How long have you been waiting for me? How did you not realize that I came. This is your punishment for not paying attention to me. Had you listened to me and followed me, things would turn out different. You wouldn't be overthrown by the Romans and your city wouldn't be destroyed." That seems really odd--what would Jesus have done had the Jews listened to him? How would things have turned out?
That's all, I don't really have anywhere to go with that, it just struck me as odd? Has anyone else ever thought about that?

OK, so this sermon I was listening to was actually part of a four part series (I've only heard the first three) entitled "Calling All Peacemakers." In the second part, Rob Bell uses a lot of statistics about poverty, US affluence, and war to make the point that there is a better way to fight against terrorism than to kill a bunch of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. (This is going to be a mixture of his thoughts, my interpretation of his thoughts, and my own thoughts--so I'd like to give him some credit, but he may not want you to think that he said some of the things that will be here.) One estimate on the cost of giving everyone in the world clean drinking water is $9 billion. An estimate on the cost to provide all women with reproductive health is $12 billion. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 16 women dies in childbirth. In the US, it's 1 in 3700. Sounds to me like that $12 billion would be a pretty good investment. Being down here, I've seen people and villages that don't have running water, and none of the water down here is not safe to drink. People here have access to bottled water, but many people can't afford it. I would love to see everyone here have their own water filter...Anyone want to donate a few million dollars? I have friends working in a small village a few hours from here and everyone there has to boil all the water they use because they don't have access to safe drinking water (at least not at a reasonable cost due to the remoteness of the village). The US has spent something near 1 trillion dollars on the war. Think of everything that we could have done with that money. We could have given billions of people a better and safer standard of living, and if we were doing that, I don't think there would be too many people who would want to try to destroy our way of life or act out in terrorism. Or we could have done a lot towards developing alternative fuel and better public transportation, so that we wouldn't need to have influence in the Persian Gulf.
If you're interested in hearing these sermons they're available on the Mars Hill website (not sure exactly what it is...google Mars Hill Grand Rapids).
Anyway, lets start doing what we can do to change the way things are (how vague was that?). Let's vote for people that are aware of what's going on in the world and are committed to using the power of the US to better the world and make it a more peaceful place. Let's think about how we spend our money and who we're supporting with it. You vote with every dollar you spend. Start doing what you can do "with your own two hands."
Peace